The Study of Norn

Michael Barnes
1.

Introduction
Da vara Iarlin dOrkneyar
For frinda sin spir de ro
Whird ane skild meun
Our glas buryon burtaga.
Or vanna ro eidnar fuo
Tega du meun our glas buryon
Kere friend min yamna meun
Eso vrildan stiende gede min vara to din.

These lines, which comprise the opening two verses of a Shetland ballad,
will for many be hard to understand. The more so if they are read aloud
(although we cannot be sure precisely how the words sounded in the mouth
of a native Shetlander, linguistic comparisons offer a useful guide). The
complete text thirty-five stanzas in all is known in Norwegian as
Hildinakvadet and often referred to in English as the Hildina ballad. It was
written down by the Scottish minister and naturalist George Low during a
visit to the Shetland island of Foula in 1774. His informant was an old man
called William Henry. Low describes the language of the ballad as Norn,
which he understands as a type of Norse, i.e. a Scandinavian idiom
(1879:105, 107). Lows understanding was wholly correct, and that is why
the two verses I have cited will not mean much to anyone unfamiliar with
Old Norse or its descendants.
I stress the Scandinavian pedigree of the language Low encountered to
avoid any misapprehension. As is well known, the Northern Isles were
invaded by Viking raiders and settlers in the 800s. By the year 1000, if not
before, their type of speech had become the sole medium of communication
in the islands, superseding the language or languages of the pre-Viking
Pictish inhabitants. A form of Scandinavian remained the dominant tongue
until it began to be challenged by Scots in the late Middle Ages. The
proximity of Orkney and Shetland especially the former to the Scottish
mainland facilitated the immigration of considerable numbers of Scots
speakers into the islands, and with the pledging of Orkney in 1468 and
Barnes, Michael. 2010. The Study of Norn. In Millar, Robert McColl (ed.) 2010.
Northern Lights, Northern Words. Selected Papers from the FRLSU Conference, Kirkwall
2009. Aberdeen: Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ireland, 26-47.
ISBN: 978-0-9566549-1-5

Barnes, The Study of Norn

Shetland in 1469 to King James III of Scotland, both the political and
linguistic fate of the Northern Isles was sealed. They were to become a fully
integrated part of the Scottish kingdom, and ultimately of the United
Kingdom; they were to adopt first Scots, and then (in writing at least)
standard English, as their language(s).
The term Norn used by George Low to describe the Scandinavian of
Shetland and Orkney derives from the Old Norse adjective norrnn
Norwegian, Norse, and/or the corresponding noun norrna Norwegian
language, Norse language. In a broad sense therefore, Norn may designate
Scandinavian spoken not just in the Northern Isles but other parts of Britain
as well. And the term has occasionally been so used. But because the
language survived longest in the far North, there has been a general tendency
to apply Norn solely to the Orkney and Shetland situation although some
have also wanted to include north-eastern Caithness (cf. Thorsen 1954:23038), an area intimately linked with the Norse Earldom of Orkney.
Whatever the geographical confines in which we place Norn, there is
no doubt it represents a form of speech that has its origin in the language of
the Viking invaders; and their language was in the main a western type of
Old Scandinavian or Old Norse. It is thus confusing when Norn is applied
to something else. It is, for example, often held that modern Shetland dialect
is a kind of Norn. But that is patently not the case. Modern Shetland dialect
is Scots. It contains a small Scandinavian element, and one that is steadily
diminishing, but in terms of pronunciation, structure and vocabulary no
linguist would have any hesitation in identifying it as fundamentally Scots.
That is not to say all philologists or linguists agree on the definition of Norn.
To some the term denotes any piece of Scandinavian language material
emanating from Scotland or, more narrowly, the Northern Isles including
medieval runic inscriptions and roman-alphabet documents. To others Norn
means only the spoken Scandinavian of Orkney and Shetland and written
records of such speech. In fact the language of the medieval inscriptions and
documents from the Northern Isles is more or less identical with that found
in contemporary inscriptions and documents from Norway, so these
manifestations of Scandinavian seem better designated as Old Norse or Old
Norwegian. For my part I would restrict Norn to mean the distinctive
form of Scandinavian speech that developed on the Scottish mainland, in the
Hebrides, and in Orkney and Shetland. Since no Norn is recorded from the
mainland or the Hebrides outside place-names and odd relics (mostly
single words) in Scots or Gaelic this means in practice I use the term

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Barnes, The Study of Norn

almost exclusively to refer to Scandinavian speech as it developed in Orkney

and Shetland.

2.

Early references to Norn

It is hard to say precisely when the study of Norn begins. The earliest
documented use of the term is dated 1485 (Johnston, Johnston and Jn
Stefnsson 1907-42, 1:55). But this refers to the language of a Norwegian
letter dealing with a Shetland matter, and thus not to Norn as I have defined
the term. In 1549, Donald Monro, High Dean of the Isles, uses the phrase
norn leid Norn language while discussing the origin of the island name
Jura (< ON Drey; Munro 1961:50). From the sixteenth or perhaps
seventeenth century comes the greeting goand da bound recorded in
Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum A Description of the Orcadian Islands
by a man styling himself Jo. Ben (Marwick 1929:224). Ben glosses the
greeting Guid day Guidman. The phrase goand da compares with modern
Icelandic or Faroese gan dag good day hello, and shows the adjectival
accusative masculine singular ending -an, which is still characteristic of the
two island Scandinavian languages. Regrettably Jo. Ben does no more than
comment on the fact that Orcadians use a different form of speech from
others and provide this one example. Where we would hope for further
glimpses of the common Orcadian idiom of his day, he simply appends the
unsatisfying abbreviation &c.. Jo. Ben is not alone in noting the existence
of a language other than Scots in Orkney. A number of those writing in the
seventeenth, eighteenth or early nineteenth century about the islands or
island affairs comment on the use of what they variously call vetere Gothica
lingua, the language of Norway, Norse, Noords or rude Danish,
Norns and Nor(e)n. Whatever the appellation, the writers generally make
it clear it is a Scandinavian idiom they have in mind. What they generally
fail to do, though, is provide examples. An exception is James Wallace, who
in the second edition of his Account of the Islands of Orkney includes a
Norn version of the Lords Prayer (1700:68-9). Unfortunately he does not
say how he came by this text. And he is very far off course in his
identification of its language as derived [...] either from the Pights, or some
others, who first planted this Country. Many of the contemporary or nearcontemporary references to the use of Norn in Orkney as well as Jo. Ben
and Wallaces samples are reprinted in Marwick (1929:224-7).
There are early references to the existence of a Scandinavian idiom in
Shetland too, here called Gothic(k), Norwegian, Norse, corrupt
Danish and Norn (cf. Stewart 1964:163-6). Once again, very few writers

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Barnes, The Study of Norn

offer samples. Sir Robert Sibbald tells us that all the Inhabitants of these
Isles in their Countrey Language call themselves Yalts [...] and their
Language by themselves is called Yaltmol (1845:68). Yalt- minus the
English -s plural would seem to go back to ON hjalti Shetlander, while
Yaltmol must be derived from an unattested ON *hjaltaml language of the
Shetlanders. However, Sibbald also tells us that the Norwegians and Danes
call Shetland Yealteland, the people Yealtines and their speech Yealta mole
(1845:11), and it is not inconceivable these Scandinavian designations have
been wrongly attributed to the Shetlanders themselves. For in both Orkney
and Shetland Norn initial hj- seems mostly to develop to []; Scots sheltie
or sholtie Shetland pony is, after all, supposedly derived via Northern-Isles
pronunciation from ON hjalti.

3.

George Low and Thomas Irvine

Sibbalds few Norn appellations if Norn they are are eclipsed by George
Lows material. Lows manuscript of A Tour through the Islands of Orkney
and Schetland (published 1879) contains two pieces of continuous Norn: the
Lords Prayer and the Hildina ballad referred to at the outset. In addition he
presents a Norn word-list containing thirty items. Lows little collection is
justly famous, and has been used by scholars to give an impression of Norn
as it might have been while still a living language. There are several
difficulties with this, however. Low was not a student of Norn, indeed it is
fairly clear he knew no Scandinavian at all, and his language material is
presented as part of a general account of the Northern Isles. He does provide
brief explanations of how he acquired his Norn samples, from which it is
clear the Lords Prayer and the ballad come from Foula, and seemingly the
word-list too. But the description he gives of the language situation on Foula
in 1774 is hazy, and has been taken by some to mean that Norn was still
regularly spoken and by others to indicate it was but a dimly remembered
language of the past. Nor is it clear that Lows material can be can be taken
as representative of eighteenth-century Shetland Norn as a whole let alone
of Orkney Norn. There are considerable differences between the type of
language he recorded and that documented by later investigators. Lows
texts and word-list show various affinities with Faroese, which do not
reappear in the later material. In the light of this it is legitimate to wonder
whether there might not have been some Faroese or other West
Scandinavian input into the Foula Norn of 1774. The island appears to have
been devastated by plague, presumably smallpox, at the turn of the
seventeenth century and possibly again in 1720 (Edmondston 1809:85;

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Baldwin 1984:55), and there are several traditions of Faroese fishermen

being cast ashore at Dale of Walls and subsequently settling on the West
Side and Foula (Baldwin 1984:50; Shetland Archives D.1/172/28/2-3). On
the other hand, oral tradition and circumstantial evidence combine to
suggest that the William Henry who communicated the Hildina ballad to
Low may well have been a pre-epidemic survivor (Baldwin 1984:59-60).
Begun in 1814 and continued for a few years thereafter are Thomas
Irvines unpublished Zetlandic Memoranda (Shetland Archives D.16/394/3).
Irvine was no more than Low a student of Norn. He was, however, a native
Shetlander, who early in life developed a strong interest in the traditional
language, tales, songs and ballads of the islands. In his introduction to the
Memoranda he notes that his grandfather also Thomas Irvine, of
Midbrake, Yell who died in 1803, was one of the few whom I remember
who could speak the Norn or repeat complete Visics [ballads]. The author
goes on to regret his failure to commit any of this and other material to paper
before his grandfather and many of the oldest people had died. In this we
may heartily concur, and only wonder, if his interest was as great as he
professes, that he neglected to preserve even a couple of lines of continuous
Norn for posterity. What he does offer is a very brief account of Norn, its
origin in Viking expansion, its relationship to other forms of Scandinavian,
and its ultimate demise. He observes that there was a slight difference in
pronunciation between Shetland and Orkney Norn, and that the language
became corrupted with Scotisisms in Orkney and died out much earlier
than in Shetland. He goes on: In the North Isles of Zetland the Norn
continued to be spoken exclusively by a great number of the natives and was
generally understood by all of them, about the year 1720. Indeed some of the
elderly people in North Yell & Unst did not understand a word of Scottish,
and from prejudice would not learn to speak it (p. 52). For this information
he cites the authority of his grandfather. The latter is presumably also the
source of the statement that upon the whole the Norn appears to have
retained a considerable degree of purity even to the last in Zetland (p. 53).
How other parts of this account are to be understood is less clear. Was
Thomas Irvine the grandfather a native speaker, for example, or did he learn
Norn later in life from a sense of local pride? It does not seem Norn was
commonly used among people of his generation. For although young
Thomas reports that his grandfather spoke the language well, the most he
will say of other old people he knew in his childhood is that they could
repeat Norn Vissics or Songs (p. 53). They knew some Norn ballads or

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songs by heart, in other words or parts of them but they are not credited
with an active knowledge of the language.
Zetlandic Memoranda does present some language material. This is in
the form of a word collection, said to be taken from a peculiar dialect [...]
used by the Fishermen of North Yell when they go out to sea, from a
superstitious motive that luck attends it (p. 53). This collection (pp. 55-7),
which covers more than fishing terms, contains many words of almost
certain Norse origin, e.g. scundie haste make speed (cf. ON skunda
hasten speed up, skunda sr hurry), fye (presumably [fa:i], < ON fair)
father. But there are also non-Scandinavian items, e.g. skuny or skonic
knife, surely from Gaelic sgian, platticks feet, most obviously derived
from the Low German adjective plat flat. Borrowing of more recent
Scandinavian terms seems to be reflected in, e.g., handtaag hand-line
(literally handle) and vigvise compass (literally signpost guide). What
we are dealing with here is the naming of certain subjects or objects in
oblique terms by fishermen at sea. This phenomenon has been termed
taboo language because fishermen were held to consider it unlucky to
name the subjects or objects concerned directly. Clearly superstition is
involved, but in the case Irvine describes, it seems to be less from a sense of
foreboding than a belief that employment of a set of circumlocutions could
make the fishing more successful. Most of the words listed occur in the
same or similar form elsewhere. A useful source is Fenton (1978:618-22),
who observes that although the majority of the circumlocutions are of Norse
origin, some come from Scots, Dutch or Low German.

4.

Early Shetland dialect studies

Shetland dialect rather than Norn was the concern of William Grant and
Arthur Laurenson, both mid-nineteenth century Lerwick merchants (Smith
1996:36-7). Grant started to compile a Shetland dictionary, with suggested
etymologies for numbers of the headwords. His work was never published,
but after his death a good deal of it was incorporated into Thomas
Edmondstons Etymological Glossary of the Shetland and Orkney Dialect
(1866). Many of the words included are compared with cognates in different
Scandinavian languages, from which their Scandinavian pedigree may be
inferred. Laurenson contributed a brief piece to the Danish periodical
Annaler for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie entitled Om sproget paa
Shetlandserne On the language of the Shetland Islands (1860:190-201).
As an introduction to this description of Shetland dialect, he offers a potted
account of the decline and demise of Norn, claiming that the language was

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still spoken in the eighteenth century, at least in Unst and Foula, the most
outlying islands. He also advances the view that Norn was corrupted more
and more until it was finally ousted by de nye Herrers Sprog the language
of the new rulers (1860:190). Appended to Laurensons contribution is an
article by the Danish philologist, K. J. Lyngby. He discusses both Norn and
modern Shetland dialect, providing analysis of some preserved specimens of
Norn (chiefly Lows from 1774), and a rudimentary survey of the
pronunciation of the current idiom. Most of what is said of Norn in the two
accounts is derivative. However, they do offer insight into contemporary
Shetland speech, Laurenson especially.
Some might want to include among contributions to the study of Norn
James Stout Anguss A Glossary of the Shetland Dialect (1914). In his
preface the author claims his object in publishing the Glossary is to help to
preserve what yet remains among us of our old Norn language, while at the
same time giving a fair sample of our dialect as it was spoken in the
nineteenth century and on to the present time (1914:5). Yet since the work
consists of an alphabetical list of Shetland words with pronunciations,
meanings and some examples of usage but no etymologies the reader is
without the guidance that would help determine whether a particular word
included is of Scandinavian origin or not. On the positive side, however, it
should be stressed that Anguss Glossary is much fuller than Edmondstons
and seems largely independent of it.

5.

Jakob Jakobsen

By common consent, the academic study of Norn begins at the end of the
nineteenth century with the work of Jakob Jakobsen. Jakobsen was a
Faroeman, and a versatile philologist. He did much to elucidate and promote
his native Faroese, and was also a respected etymologist. In keeping with the
climate of the times, his approach was strongly historical. Even his efforts to
promote Faroese as a language capable of dealing with the demands of the
modern world sprang in part from a veneration for its Old Norse origins. It
is no surprise, then, that when Jakobsen in the years 1893 to 1895 made a
study trip to Shetland, his efforts centred on Norn, a language of the past
also descended from Old Norse. By the time he arrived Norn had probably
been extinct for some considerable time. Nevertheless, he worked with
single-mindedness and dedication to record any remnant of the language that
could still be found. Words, phrases, snatches of conversation, proverbs,
rhymes, riddles, place-names as well as other, less conspicuous features

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all were carefully noted down and most subsequently analysed and
discussed. Although Jakobsen made two further brief visits to Shetland, in
1905 and 1912, it was in the years 1893-5 that the bulk of the work of
collection was accomplished. Orkney was also on the agenda. He went there
first in 1909, but in the event never stayed for any length of time. And what
he managed to collect in the more southerly group of islands was
insignificant compared with the Shetland harvest.
Following the 1893-5 visit, Jakobsen began to issue the results of his
research in both learned and popular form. (A more or less complete
bibliography of his published work can be found in Grnneberg 1981, which
separates from the rest those items that deal with Orkney and Shetland.)
Important to mention here are his doctoral thesis, Det norrne sprog p
Shetland The Norse language in Shetland (1897a), the two popular
lectures, The Dialect and Place Names of Shetland (1897b), the pioneering
Shetlandsernes stednavne (1901), an English-language version of which
came out under the title The Place-Names of Shetland (1936, reprinted
1993), the article Nordiske minder, isr sproglige, p Orknerne
Scandinavian relics, particularly linguistic, in Orkney (1911), and the
monumental two-volume Etymologisk ordbog over det norrne sprog p
Shetland (1908-21) together with the English-language version An
Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland (1928-32,
reprinted 1985).
Jakobsens doctoral thesis offers a general account of Norn in
Shetland, though it is heavily concerned with individual lexical items. The
Dialect and Place Names of Shetland provides entertaining and lucid
summaries for the lay reader of the authors most important discoveries. The
Place-Names of Shetland addresses names of Norse origin by type. We find,
for example, Words forming place-names which denote natural features,
Names of farms, and The fishermens place-name tabu. There is also a
section on Celtic place-names in Shetland. The Nordiske minder []
article gives a historical introduction to Norn in Orkney and makes various
comparisons with Shetland. A good number of examples are also provided
of Norn words preserved in Orkney speech. While this contribution cannot
be considered more than an introductory survey, it assumes a certain
importance since Jakobsen otherwise published very little on Orkney Norn.
His major work on Northern-Isles Scandinavian is undoubtedly the
Etymological Dictionary. A 104 page introduction presents the essentials
from his doctoral thesis, while the dictionary proper runs to over a thousand
pages and contains some 10,000 entries.

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Jakobsens publications on Norn were well received by his

contemporaries specialists and lay people alike. Partly no doubt because of
his stature, but perhaps also because interest in Norn seems to have declined
in the 1930s and post-war years, there was for a long time little or no
academic debate about the strengths and weaknesses of Jakobsens work. It
was only in the second half of the twentieth century that sporadic criticism
began to be voiced. Some of his phonetic transcriptions were deemed
confusingly varied, certain of his etymologies were questioned, and, above
all, his account of how Norn came to be replaced by Scots was seriously
challenged. As part of a reasoned critique of Jakobsens work on Norn, I
have tried to summarise these criticisms and weigh up their merits (Barnes
1996). One of my own complaints is the lack of systematisation in his
treatment of the data. Too often it is as though Jakobsen fails to see the
wood for the trees. But the weakest aspect of his presentation is undoubtedly
the account he renders of the Norn-Scots language shift in Shetland, which
is seen in terms of a gradual but increasingly Scots dominated intermixture
of the two languages. I will return to this question towards the end of my
paper.

6.

The Hildina ballad

Less well known than Jakobsens work is Marius Hgstads edition and
study of Hildinakvadet, the ballad collected by George Low on Foula in
1774. The edition appeared as early as 1900, but is written in an antiquated
and austere kind of landsml, and has never been translated into English.
Yet Hgstads contribution represents an important milestone in the study
of Norn. He dissects Lows often garbled text and on the basis of a
comparison with Old Norse tries not so much to restore it to an assumed
original state as put it into the form in which he believes William Henry or
his immediate predecessors will have recited it. At the same time Hgstad
offers us his understanding of how the vowel and consonant sounds of Old
Norse are reflected in the Norn ballad.
Hgstad was not the only Norwegian to work on this text. As early as
1838 the celebrated historian, P.A. Munch, had published all thirty-five
stanzas together with outline commentary (1838:118-26). Sophus Bugge, the
famous nineteenth-century philologist, also studied the ballad, and his
interpretation, with emendations by other Scandinavian scholars, was
ultimately published by the Danish folklorist Hakon Grner-Nielsen in
1939. Bugges interpretation, as it appears in Grner-Nielsens presentation,
consists of no more than a rendering of the text into Old Norse. Grner-

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Nielsen himself adds detailed commentary on ballad parallels individual

words, phrases and motifs. His conclusion is that Hildina can be considered
part of a genuine Shetland tradition; it is not a late introduction from the
Faroes, as some might be inclined to believe (1939:151). A full English
translation of the ballad exists, based on Hgstads amended text
(Collingwood 1908), and there is also a general introduction in English:
Shetlands Hildina Ballad: Its Discovery and Further Discussions (Rendboe
1993).

7.

Hugh Marwick and George Flom

It was in the early decades of the twentieth century that Orkney Norn was
given full scholarly treatment. The investigator was Hugh Marwick, himself
an Orcadian, and his research culminated in 1929 with the publication of the
appropriately titled The Orkney Norn. Marwick was an admirer of Jakobsen,
and his book follows in basic outline the earlier scholars Etymological
Dictionary (in the production of which Marwick assisted, Jakobsen 192832:vi). By way of introduction to the glossary of Norn words, which forms
the backbone of Marwicks contribution, the reader is given a brief account
of the history of Norn in Orkney, sundry grammatical notes, samples of
idioms, proverbs, riddles, etc., and a rather more systematic account than
Jakobsen provides of vowel and consonant developments. The glossary
itself fills just over 215 pages and contains some 3000 items. The Orkney
Norn concludes with four appendices: appendix I lists unusual linguistic
forms in the Maeshowe runic inscriptions; II contains the texts of the four
preserved Scandinavian-language diplomas from Orkney; III cites a number
of literary references to Orkney Norn; IV tabulates variations in vowel
sounds in the modern dialect between different parishes in Orkney. Like
Jakobsen, Marwick had a strong interest in place-names, and in the Northern
Isles most of these are of course of Norse origin. He published on names in
several of the Orkney islands as well as in the Mainland parish of Birsay.
His onomastic work culminated in the monograph Orkney Farm Names
(1952). Marwick was first and foremost a collector of material, and in this
he also resembles Jakobsen. The analysis in Orkney Farm Names can be
solid and persuasive, but the introduction to The Orkney Norn scarcely rises
above the routine. Jakobsens spirit hovers over the presentation, and when
it comes to discussion of the Norn-Scots language shift Marwick is happy to
quote the Faroese scholars views verbatim (1929:xxvii-xxviii an English
translation of Jakobsen 1897:13-14). He does concede, though, that the

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change was something more than a steady inflation of Norn with Scots
words until it became more Scots than Norn (1929:xvii).
The idea that Norn slowly changed into Scots received strong support
from the Norwegian-American scholar, George Flom. Indeed, Flom goes so
far as to postulate a steadily declining ratio of Norn to Scots words; he even
gives precise figures: 12:5 in 1850 and 1:1 in 1900 (1928-9:150). He does
not, however, consider the implications of these figures for earlier or later
periods. A modern scholar, the Dane Laurits Rendboe, has extended the
graph experimentally in either direction, resulting in a Norn around 1790
that was pure Scandinavian, at least in its word-stock, and a Scots around
1950, some 25% of whose vocabulary would still have been of Norse origin
(Rendboe 1984:55). The latter figure we know is wrong, and there seems
little reason to believe in the 100% Norn word-stock of 1790 either. In
fairness to Flom, it must be stressed that he nowhere advocates the even
decline shown in Rendboes graph, but it is a conclusion his presentation
does nothing to disturb. Flom tends to view the shift from Norn to Scots
chiefly in terms of vocabulary. He has rather little to say about the
inflexional system, and still less about pronunciation and syntax. Vocabulary
looms large in Jakobsen and Marwicks work too, as we have seen, but these
scholars do pay due attention to pronunciation and inflexions, if not syntax.

8.

1981 to the present: the controversy surrounding the death

of Norn

Following Flom and Marwicks contributions, the study of Norn rested a

while. We have Grner-Nielsens 1939 article on the Hildina ballad, but that
was in part based on earlier material, as already noted. 1971 saw the
publication of John Geipels The Viking Legacy, which devotes many pages
to Norn. However, the author is heavily indebted to Jakobsen and Marwick,
and his own contribution is largely limited to selecting and organising the
material.
It is in the 1980s we see a reawakening of interest in Norn, and this
takes a number of forms. At the start of the decade, a project was launched
with participants from the universities of Trondheim and Stockholm,
entitled Norn. The Scandinavian Element in Shetland Dialect. The aim of
the project was not only to look at what remained of the one-time
Scandinavian idiom of Shetland almost ninety years after Jakobsen made his
principal survey but also to probe linguistic attitudes in Shetland. One of the
participants, the Swedish scholar Gunnel Melchers, initiated a series of
publications with an article characteristically entitled The Norn element in

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Shetland dialect today a case of never accepted language death (1981).

A not unreasonable criticism of the project concerns its employment of the
term Norn. The object of the study is the Scandinavian sub-stratum in
modern Shetland dialect, and to call this Norn hardly aids the cause of
clarity unless we are to give the spoken Scandinavian of Orkney and
Shetland some other name.
It is with Norn in the sense of a Scandinavian idiom once spoken in
the Northern Isles that Laurits Rendboe is concerned. Beginning in 1984 he
has written extensively on the Shetland variety. His work consists in part in
the presentation and analysis of preserved Norn texts (e.g. 1987; 1988-9;
1996), in part in promotion of the view that Norn continued to be spoken in
Shetland in unadulterated form until it finally expired late in the nineteenth
century (e.g. 1984; 1987:5-7, 97-9). These are two prongs of a single attack,
it turns out, for the analysis of the Norn texts is designed to show they are
effectively free from Scots influence. Indeed, in his very first foray into the
subject Rendboe is able to conclude (1984:80): As far as the available
evidence shows, Norn stood firm to the end. This is clearly at complete
variance with the Jakobsen-Flom-Marwick understanding of the language
shift, whereby Norn under the influence of Scots gradually became a hybrid
tongue and eventually emerged as modern Shetland or Orkney dialect.
The three earlier scholars do not, it must be said, argue a serious case
for their interpretation of events. Rather, they present it as more or less selfevident. There is a danger in criticising them for this that we forget the
scholarly situation and climate in which they operated. Nevertheless, one
cannot avoid a tinge of exasperation at the lack of analysis and the
unwillingness to search for different possible explanations of the data. There
is the added problem that crucial terms such as Norn, Scots, dialect,
language, etc. are used in so disconcertingly vague a manner that one
sometimes wonders whether the writers themselves understood precisely
what they had in mind.
Rendboe, in contrast, works diligently to make his interpretation of the
language shift plausible. As well as attempting to show that the extant
Shetland Norn texts point to a pure form of Scandinavian, he sketches a
picture of Shetland history in which the Scots incomers are colonial masters
cruelly oppressing the native population. Instead of buckling under,
however, the Shetlanders resisted, and one of the manifestations of the
resistance was an unwillingness to adopt Scots features in their speech
(1984; 1987:1-5).

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Barnes, The Study of Norn

It is certainly true that the Hildina ballad exhibits scant evidence of

Scots influence, and that is also largely the case with Lows word-list. The
Shetland and Orkney versions of the Lords Prayer, on the other hand, do
have a conspicuous Scots or English element. Be that as it may, we are
entitled to wonder how much these three pieces of material from 1774 can
tell us about the state of the spoken language at the time. Neither a
traditional ballad nor the Lords Prayer is likely to have been very close to
everyday conversation in structure or vocabulary, while the word-list arose
from Lows prompting for Norn equivalents of various English words he
proposed.
Rendboes method of dealing with the late nineteenth-century
material, it does not seem unfair to say, is to render it into putative Norn and
declare the result pure Norse. One of Jakobsens fragments of
conversation, collected on Foula, runs: Jarta, bodena komena rontena
Komba (I ignore the special characters Jakobsen deploys), glossed by him
My heart (my dear), the boat (a boat) has come round de Kaim [a hill in
Foula near the coast] (1928-32:xcii). On the face of it we have here a text in
which the inflexional endings are neither Norn nor Scots, but have been
levelled to -(en)a, a feature characteristic of many of the so-called Norn
fragments collected by Jakobsen. Rendboe corrects the text to read jarta
boden e komen ronten komba (again special characters are ignored), where
boden consists of the word for boat to which is suffixed the definite article
in Scandinavian fashion, e represents the copula (Norse er), komen is the
past participle of the verb [to] come, and ronten is said to be a preposition
corresponding to Norwegian and Danish rundten round about. While the
final -a of bodena contains the copula, those of komena and rontena are
added by analogy (1984:67-8). In actual fact the text as we have it exhibits
neither Scandinavian nor Scots grammar. It might at one time have had the
form Rendboe invests it with if we can believe such an unmemorable
exclamation was repeated over the years but that is not the point. As
collected by Jakobsen this fragment of conversation is not a specimen of
pure Norn, but a sequence of Scandinavian words with no discernible
grammatical system.
Rendboes understanding of Shetland history has been challenged by
Brian Smith, the Shetland Archivist. In a 1993 paper (Smith 1996) he denies
that the post-impignoration situation was one of cruel oppression of the
Shetlanders by Scots. Instead he paints a picture of a thriving entrepreneurial
society run chiefly by locals people of both Scots and Norse descent.
Smiths conception of post-impignoration Shetland based on a thorough

38

Barnes, The Study of Norn

and detailed study of the primary sources leads him to conclude that a
form of Scots speech became established as a stable linguistic medium in
the islands as early as the sixteenth century. In this and the following
century, he argues, Shetlanders spoke a variety of languages (Scots, Norn,
Low German, Dutch) whatever was required to safeguard their many
commercial interests. During the seventeenth century Shetlanders contacts
with countries other than Scotland diminished, and this, Smith maintains,
had an effect on their linguistic proficiency. By the eighteenth century local
merchant-lairds controlled commerce with the Continent, and the only
language most Shetlanders would have had their attention directed to was
Scots. In that situation Norn must have seemed of little relevance, and more
and more people being equally at home in Scots and Norn stopped using
the Scandinavian tongue.
We have, then, three rival interpretations of the death of Norn
chiefly Shetland Norn, it must be stressed. My own view, which I have
arrived at from repeated consideration of the sources, is very much in line
with Smiths. In my 1998 book, The Norn Language of Orkney and
Shetland, I reject the Jakobsen-Flom-Marwick scenario chiefly on the
grounds that the imperceptible melting of one language into another they
envisage seems to be without parallel (p. 23). This claim has been
challenged, examples of mixed languages offered, and the term creoloid
introduced into the discussion (Wiggen 2002:24-6). But none of the
examples adduced is of a Language A, which under the influence of a
Language B gradually turns into B. Nor is a creoloid, as I understand the
term, such a language. Rather, creoloid refers to a form of speech which
has distanced itself from its origins under the influence of another language
but which exists side-by-side with the mother tongue. Even were a
development of the kind envisaged, from Language A to Language B,
documented elsewhere, it would not absolve those advocating a similar shift
in Orkney and Shetland from arguing a plausible case. No such case, as I see
it, has so far been presented.
Rendboes belief in a pure Norn that lasted well beyond the middle of
the nineteenth century must also, I am convinced, be rejected. I have already
adduced evidence to suggest there is little warrant for such a conclusion. I
further note it is common for languages in terminal decline to lose both
functions and features and to suffer extensive interference from the
dominant tongue (cf., e.g., Weinreich 1953; Dressler and Wodak-Leodolter
1977; Dorian 1981; Schmidt 1985). Although there are counter-examples to
this, and there are certainly dangers in basing conclusions about what

39

Barnes, The Study of Norn

happened in a given linguistic situation on the outcomes of analogous

situations elsewhere, such evidence of interference cannot be ignored. As for
Rendboes nineteenth-century Norn speakers, these owe their existence
chiefly to certain remarks by Jakobsen. He relates (1928-32:xix):
The last man in Unst who is said to have been able to speak Norn,
Walter Sutherland from Skaw, died about 1850. In Foula, on the other
hand, men who were living much later than the middle of the present
(19th) century are said to have been able to speak Norn.
But Jakobsen himself casts serious doubt on the validity of these statements:
The Norn spoken towards the middle of the century and later can
hardly have been of much account. The difference between it and the
dialect of the oldest people of the present generation probably
consisted in little more than the fact that the former contained a greater
sprinkling of Norn words which the younger people did not
understand. Moreover, the persons mentioned had probably a certain
reputation because they could recite fragments of songs, rhymes and
modes of expression, etc. in Norn, things that others had forgotten.
Notwithstanding the difficulties attending his interpretation of the
death of Norn, Rendboe receives solid support from the Norwegian scholar,
Geirr Wiggen (2002). Wiggen is also sympathetically disposed to the
Jakobsen-Flom-Marwick view. Unlike Rendboe, he allows for considerable
Scots influence on Norn, but joins the Dane in believing Norn continued as
a living language far into the nineteenth century, perhaps in fairly pure form
among some speakers. Wiggens principal thesis is that it was not until the
advent of regular schooling in the early nineteenth century that Norn finally
succumbed to Scots, and in accordance with this he looks for and claims to
find socio-historical evidence that would support the supposition of a goodly
body of Norn speakers as late as the 1820s, some of whom will have
survived until the middle of the century and beyond (2002:68-76 et passim).
In adopting this interpretation of events, Wiggen is necessarily critical of
both Smith and me. Indeed, in his account I can appear as something of a
muddle-head, espousing now this view, now that. What Wiggen does not
always appreciate is the contexts in which my different contributions to the
study of Norn appeared. The initial 1984 foray, for example, as befitted the
volume in which it appeared, was intended primarily as a statement of what

40

Barnes, The Study of Norn

was then generally accepted accompanied by a few critical remarks along

the way. Further research led me little by little to modify certain of my
conclusions. But Wiggen does not easily see this. He casts a critical eye on
statements I and others have made, and conclusions we have reached, and
discovers sundry contradictions. But these are not in my case at least the
result of carelessness or perversity. They reflect rather a developing
understanding of the data.
It is not possible within the confines of the present discussion to
examine Wiggens socio-historical arguments in favour of a nineteenthcentury survival of both Orkney and Shetland Norn. It is worth noting,
however, that Remco Knooihuizen in a recent article (2005), having
concluded that the majority of Orcadians and Shetlanders had abandoned
Norn for Scots shortly after 1700 at the latest, provides several sociohistorical reasons why the language shift might have happened at such a
relatively early period. These come under the headings: the use of Scots in
administration and law, the use of Scots in religious contexts, the spread
of Scots and English through (formal) education, the loss of language
contact with Scandinavia, and increasing language contact with Scots.
Knooihuizen agrees with Smith and me that the prominence of Scots in the
public domain, diminishing contact with Scandinavian, and increasing
contact with Scots are all important factors. As regards education, it is
enough to cite his principal conclusion: if we accept c. 1700 as the date for
the primary language shift, it would be impossible for an education
campaign that started in 1713 to have been a cause of the shift (2005:111).
1713 is said to be the year the first Scottish Society for the Propagation of
Christian Knowledge school was launched in Shetland (but cf. Wiggen
2002:41, who advocates a later date). However, as Knooihuizen stresses
and Wiggen too for that matter the amount and quality of education
provided by these schools was to begin with extremely limited, and we have
to go forward a good hundred years to find general education becoming an
important factor in Northern-Isles life. Thus, if schooling is to be its
nemesis, Norn still has to be alive and well in the early 1800s.
It is legitimate to enquire why Smith, Knooihuizen and I are convinced
Norn died out a century earlier than Rendboe and Wiggen hold. For me, at
least, there are three main reasons. The contemporary literary references to
Norn taken cumulatively indicate that by 1800 at the latest the language had
ceased to be spoken. When Norn is mentioned after that date it is as a
language of the past. This evidence is confirmed by the testimony of the
Shetlander, Thomas Irvine, discussed above. Writing in 1814 and thereafter,

41

Barnes, The Study of Norn

it is clear he knew of no one who could speak Norn. Some ten years earlier
there had been but one or two. Ability to speak the language thus seems to
have been an extreme rarity in Shetland at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Finally there are the words of George Low, who procured three
samples of Norn on Foula in 1774. Elsewhere I have described his account
of the linguistic situation on Foula and the West Side as ambiguous
(1998:26). Smiths conclusion is more brutal: Low didnt describe a living
language; he described a dead one (1996: 34). After much reconsideration
of the evidence, I have come to agree with Smith. It is true Low claims:
None of them can write their ancient language, and but very few speak it.
But he also notes: there are some who know a few words of it [Norn], and
further: nothing remains but a few names of things and two or three
remnants of songs which one old man can repeat, and that but indistinctly
(1879:105). The deciding factor, however, must be the actual material Low
collected. Despite repeated enquiry he was only able to obtain a total of
thirty words (These few words are what I could pick up; many others I
proposed, but without effect, 1879:107). As for the Hildina ballad, he
observes: A literal translation of the above I could not procure, but the
substance is this. There follows a description of the contents, which does
not in all respects agree with the text, insofar as this is understood. On the
basis of Lows comments and in accordance with Nancy Dorians threelevel gradation of language proficiency in cases of language death
(1981:32), Knooihuizen deems Lows informant, William Henry, at best a
very poor semi-speaker, but more likely no more than a rememberer
(2005:106-7). A rememberer is one who knows words and phrases but has
no real command of the language.
We may of course wonder, if Henry was no better than a rememberer
in 1774, how it was so much was still available to be collected when
Jakobsen arrived in Shetland in 1893. To this I have no clear answer. Much,
I suppose, will have had to do with the importance attached to things Norse
among those who perpetuated the snatches of Norn Jakobsen was able to
pick up. Here I would simply draw attention to an analogous situation in
Cornwall, where pieces of Cornish could be found for over a hundred years
after the death of Dorothy Pentreath in 1777 or 1778, reputedly the last
native speaker (Beresford Ellis 1974:125-46). Reasons for the perpetuation
of Norn after it ceased to be spoken, both in the form of words, phrases and
snatches of text and as a substratum in the emerging Scots of Shetland, are
considered in two recent articles, Millar (2008) and Knooihuizen (2009).
However, these contributions are concerned with the origin of Shetland

42

Barnes, The Study of Norn

Scots, which is analysed within the theoretical framework of new-dialect

formation. They thus essentially fall outside the scope of the present paper.
It would certainly lead too far to discuss their implications here.

9.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion we may consider what the study of Norn has so far
achieved. I would summarise as follows. First, material has been collected,
examined, and published. Second, the changing status of Norse/Norn in the
Northern Isles has been charted, as far as the scarcity of data permits. Third,
the language has been analysed, its structure clarified (again within the
limits set by the data), and its relationship with other forms of Scandinavian
reasonably clearly established. Fourth, the interaction of Norse/Norn with
other languages, first and foremost Pictish and Scots, has been considered.
Fifth, the time and manner of Norns demise have been extensively
discussed, and views have changed as understanding of Orkney and
Shetland history and knowledge of language shift and language death have
increased. Sixth, terminological vagueness has slowly given way to greater
precision, which both reflects and allows greater clarity of thought.

43

Barnes, The Study of Norn

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